You guys really haven't read the BFS yet, have you? There are 72 ppm of Scandium in the ore body, on the average. This is very low compared to the other potential scandium miners. The difference for Niocorp is that during the Niobium and Titanium extraction a handful of byproducts are produced.
The byproducts, by nature, have higher Sc content than the ore body. It still costs a significant amount of money to produce the scandium trioxide payable material from these byproducts. Exactly $1127/kg if the assumptions in the study are accurate. This is in addition to the operating costs to produce FeNb, which is only $12/kg. You don't even have to go through the full BFS to find this information. It was all released with the preliminary results.
Furthermore, the full BFS makes it clear that without Sc sales, the results will not meet the criteria for the debt markets. So all this other talk of the mine standing on its own with only Nb production is flat out incorrect. This statement is on page 25.
The Project will obviously benefit from becoming a stable, domestic US producer of Nb and Sc2O3
where currently all supplies must be imported from abroad. Nb sales (32% of gross revenue
generated) as modelled would cover the cost of production for all three commodities but Sc2O3 sales
will be required to generate positive cash flow to cover any Project loan principal repayments/interest
expense and meet investment criteria for stakeholders.
